quinn’s thirty-fifth month ~ in which dragons come and they drink the bay

By marybethrew, on January 23rd, 2010

12-24-09

quinn’s presents all arrived on time, yesterday. yay!

12-26-09

what a day yesterday. i’m so thankful that today has been brilliantly sunny and that we planned on not hanging out with coparent today. what a relief! quinn and i hung out around the house and played, i cleaned some, and then we went out with the scooter to the trail at south beach and played there too. sunny goodness. he is now napping. on the ride home he was telling me all kinds of stories. going over the bridge:

and mama, the dragons come and they drink the bay. and then they go and eat snow. and when they drink, it’s water. the bay. they go in it. and they’re green. yeah, too. and the sea lions go in the bay and the fall in the water splash and dive down to the bottom. and if i was on the bottom of the bay i would be a sea lion. and they swim down there. and then they fall in the water off the edge of the rocks. but the penguins, they fall in the water off the edge and THEY swim in the water. but the penguins sing first, then fall in the water and swim. first they sing. but the penguins sing first then swim. but the sea lions and dragons fall off the edge and swim in the water, the penguin snow water.

something like that….

i baked muffins with quinn. the rest of the day i’m not sure what we did, but i know it was somewhat stressful with coparent, as holidays are wont to be. before nap i said we should just split up the rest of the day with quinn.

when we got to shop, quinn decided he wanted to stay at shop, which was good i needed a huge time out from the both of them. and i went to the beach and wrote in my journal, and went home and cried on the phone to mom and then took a bath. then went over to the shop, watched winnie the pooh with them, and quinn fell asleep on me. we came home and he and i played a lot with new pirate stuff and tinker toys and all that stuff and went to bed at 11.

1-3-10

maybe it is the full moon or just that i have been able to sleep in more days than usual… (“sleep in” till 8 or 9). but i have been actually dreaming and remembering more dreams than normal.

i had one the night before i went to amy’s house, that the gift i was bringing her wasn’t kosher (they celebrate some jewish holidays and observe stuff like kosher even though they are christian…. and also that they are gluten free diet and so i was panicking that the applesauce we had made might not be kosher and might have gluten in it. oy. then another dream last night which was about coparent (although i think it might have also been about sarah) using up pieces of fabric i had set aside for certain purposes, and cut them up and sewed them and i was like bummed he had done that. feeling like there are boundary issues BIG time with him right now so that explains that one. and me not speaking up about it is the gist of the dream i think.

1-11-10

quinn didn’t fall asleep until after 11, and i somehow woke up at 4:30 and didn’t fall back to sleep. got out of bed this am at 5:13. before my alarm, by 12 minutes. i am just sort of a ball of thought, none of it seems “bad” just overwhelming and a lot of it. so i’m trying to sort myself out. lots of it, in fact, is good stuff, like thinking about homeschool/unschooling and thinking about the business, the market, etc. all on my mind because of recent emails and just kind of…. feeling inspired but not maybe quite focused yet?

1-14-10

we have a book called “earth mother” which we LOVE LOVE LOVE and she “puts shiny jackets on the beetles.” i just want him flooded with that kind of mythology and symbolism.

yesterday we went to amy’s. i think quinn wants to join their family. hell, i want to join their family. i love them.

i am bad with social “play dates” though. i never know when i am supposed to leave. both for the person whose house it is, and for quinn. i do know for quinn more often than the other people. but yesterday i let it go too long, and he was a wreck when we were leaving. just tired, and he was soooo upset because he really wanted to “keep working on those shapes” they have those foam puzzle-piece things that you can build into giant stuff. in each square are cutout shapes that you have to match up (stars hearts “stop signs” etc) and he fell in love with putting them together and just could not tear himself away… anyway i literally was carrying a screaming child to the car and waved goodbye. it was rough. lol. and i felt like ok, amy is my age, but she has SOOOOO many years of experience being a parent and i have not yet 3. anyway. humbling. i don’t feel BAD about it, just a little bit like oooh i need to pay more attention to the time, and maybe ask her ahead what time she’d like us to go, so i am not overstaying, or know i’m NOT overstaying, because i may be creating that in my mind.

Q and Elias eating omelettes. (they also get eggs from our market friends.)

but we got to chat a bit about the market, and about some projects, and i helped skylar figure out how much fabric she’ll need to sew aprons for all the kids (matching ones, in a bright color so they can easily be kept track of lol! they rock.) skylar is just starting to learn to sew so i hope i can help her out with it. she is such a cool kid. overall it was a lovely morning and i think quinn had a blast.

1-15-10

rant:
mary beth rew’s theory of sleep. it goes like this. life comes in segments of hour-and-a-half. every 1.5 hours, you have an opportunity to fall asleep, and if you are already asleep, you have the opportunity to wake up naturally at the next hour and a half segment, or stay asleep. sleep can of course be interrupted earlier than that 1.5 hour segment (*usually, though you can have times when it’s impossible to wake someone up!) you cannot however interrupt an AWAKE cycle of 1.5 hours. if you have slept in the previous 1.5 hours AT ALL, and then become fully awake again, you MUST wait 1.5 hours for the next opportunity to sleep. quinn slept for 5 minutes on the bus, was fully awake again. i went there at 11:30. guess what time i finally got him to sleep? 1:00.

it’s totally based on quinn, and then i applied it to myself and i notice how much healthier my sleep is if i calculate the right number of hours- and it’s not quantity directly. it is directly related to multiples of 1.5 hours…. for us anyway! but yeah it’s like in the night if quinn wakes up (he doesn’t do this much anymore) i just get up. otherwise we lay there for…. yep! an hour and a half. it’s just sort of basic to me now, having observed it SO many times. if i push him to sleep, he will go to sleep in 1.5 hours. if i don’t push him to sleep, he will go to sleep in 1.5 hours. why stress it?

most of the time with me, i go back to sleep pretty easily if he wakes me up for milk or even if i need to change his diaper and then do milk… i think i do not fully wake up, is how that works. the other day when i woke up at 4:30… i woke up fully. and i had slept for 6 hours i think (or maybe 4.5)… and was like not at all close to being able to fall back to sleep. i always used to say (like in high school, college) that i need not 8 but NINE hours of sleep. makes sense to me now. but i am happy to get 6 these days. 6 is better than 7 somehow. i’m weird. i also noticed back in college that napping, i should only cat nap, or if i am going to nap for longer than 1.5 it has to be at least 3 hours. 2 is right out! if i nap for two hours it is like a mac truck hit me, like i am walking around but i am still asleep for that first hour….

1-18-10

happy martin luther king day…. um………… doh! i didn’t need to come to work today!!!!!!!!!!!! sigh….

“working” is in quotes…. ahhhh nice long yoga class, a little online shopping (part for my printer, so business-related), and a little cafe mom. not exactly clocking work time, but i figure i need a break, and this is my chance. headed over to nap quinn (walking this time, i usually drive but its close enough for a walk on a day like this) and then get on craigslist to look for cars…… my deadline for loan is feb 3rd (my due date!)

my weekend was pretty uneventful. (a good thing.) i spent little time with coparent, and that time was at the barn (lee and kate’s) on saturday night playing music (i didn’t even really play much i mostly played with quinn up in the barn) so that was cool. it’s a real hootenanny up there, i love it.

we had a killer storm last night, thunder lightning crazy wind hail and downpouring rain. it kept quinn and me awake until 11:30 unfortunately, but it was cool and we got along fine, mostly just cuddled in the dark and talked. he’s such a sweetie. last night he was telling me things and then i would just listen and he’d get quiet. then i’d ask if he wanted to talk about anything else, and he said. “i have something else i want to talk to you.” and i’d say, ok, what is it? and he replied “i want you to tell me what it is because i don’t know what it is yet.” i joked with him that he wanted me to squish my brain up close to his and know what he wanted to say. he’s so great. i had to wake him up early. can’t remember what i’ve told you about our recent attempts but he has been going to the shop every day while i work, so i have to wake him up 1.5 hours earlier than he has been used to. in general (last night notwithstanding) it has moved his bedtime earlier, so that has been good.

i’m reading this book called “raising our children, raising ourselves”. it is SOOOO timely. quinn is definitely moving through something (hopefully moving through and not staying here long!) and having a surge of tantrum-like stuff. i definitely have benefited from the fact that the reading is all so fresh in my mind. (lol he handed me the book on saturday- here mama, here’s your book! what oh what could the message be?) she urges us not to alter reality for the kiddo and yet there are times when it is ok to creatively problem solve and it doesn’t mean you’re “yielding” to the tantrum or whatever. she makes good distinctions about when each approach is appropriate. she’s really helping me out with this. i think i am sometimes too yielding, too ready to alter reality, and it helps to understand better that it gives him more power than he may be ready to handle, and that may be a scary place for him. it is also helping me to just be there for him while he cries, if reality cannot be changed, and not try to shush and calm him down for my own sake. but let him express whatever he needs to express, in whatever way he needs to express it.

right now, i am reading “raising our children raising ourselves” and “the unschooling handbook” along with issues of “home education magazine” and also “naturally healthy babies and children”. lots of non fiction for me right now.

1-19-09

the happy spot- he’s wearing wool “board shorts” as his diaper cover, that amy made and we are trying out (they were elias’s)

q’s citrus sculpture- i didn’t even see him do that, i just came upon it later and had to take a pic. he’s so funny and makes up such fun things to do.

quinn’s “big doll” (xmas present from mama- so far that is his name, big doll.)

the little fisherman

typical toddler dinner- 4 bowls, 3 spoons, 1 fork

coffee making in his kitchen.

the coffee results. (had a bag of grounds i was never going to use, he has dumped them on floor, we kept saving them for him to use and this time he really USED them.)

diaper salesman

otter rock sunset. we went tidepooling “where oh where can our sea urchins be?” (we found them yay! has to be REALLY low tide for that)

eggs again. he has taken them out of the fridge, and re-transferred them just about every night since we got them. he is HILARIOUS.

last night- the eggs again (there are fewer each time because we get 2.5 dozen rack only once a month) and he broke one on the floor. i scooped it up and cooked it and put it in my burrito.

being a kitty

one of my faves i don’t know if i’ve written down anywhere is he often will say “remember when…… last morning?” (instead of yesterday morning or yesterday or whatever. actually it is fun to see him refining his concept of days and time- sometimes “last morning” or “yesterday” means before naptime, or sometimes it is days ago… it just depends on what he is talking about and how vivid it is in his mind and how much he’s been keeping track of time. it’s fun to watch.

now that he has the “L” sound down… he is saying extra L’s on some words that are really “y” sounds. but for so long everything y AND L was a Y so now he is saying “lose” for use. oh and funniest word for him to say lately is oil. “eel” or “ell” or “ool” i have heard so many variations. last night he was telling me a whole story of putting new eel in the car because when the ell gets old you have to put in new eoll. it made me smile.

1-19-10

law-of-attraction-power-of-positive-thinking stuff, and also the how to design my life to work the best way

i am looking to figure out what i want my (for lack of better term) “life’s work” to look like. i am a biologist and have a pretty “good” job, working for oregon state and NOAA, in a geographic location i really like, it pays me decently and i get health coverage. blah blah. i also am just beginning (started in 2009) a WAHM business, sewing cloth diapers and baby carriers. i had a fairly decent year with selling at my local farmer’s market, decent enough that it is inspiring me to think a lot harder about what i want to make of that business (how much to pursue online etc), what i want to do with my J-o-b, and which of these (if either of them) i see as my life’s work. “none of the above” might also be a choice. honestly my life’s work has more to do with raising quinn than any of these other things, and so i guess what i am trying to figure out is which of these avenues will allow me to parent him/ live life with him closest to my values and goals… which include radical unschooling and trying to get off grid on some land and become much more self-sufficient, to sum it up very briefly.

wow, this is such a journey. i think i mentioned to some, that i was given (no strings attached) a brand new laptop about a month ago… i now own the domain name “earthhuggy.com” and signed up with a green (wind-powered) web hosting company (local too, or local-ish, it’s in portland). and now gearing up to design a cool site. it’s invigorating! (if a little intimidating, html and i are only vaguely familiar with each other lol). and also being inspired by another local mama who lives a very similar lifestyle, except she has a partner and 6 kids to my one lol. she is a knitter and sells online, and is the one who gave me the laptop, actually it was her dh’s idea to give that to me. anyway, she and yet another local mama want to partner up with me for this coming year’s farmer’s market (splitting of booth fees, set up labor, etc) and i am so psyched- i’m thinking of names for that (newport handmade mamas collective…. something along those lines?) and amy (the knitter mama) and i have really been in the groove with sparking each other’s creativity and new designs and ideas for collaborations (diaper/longie combos to sell, etc). it’s just budding but it’s so easy to envision the blossoming with all of this recent energy.

at the same time, i am hearing of friends who are being laid off/losing funding here at my desk/bench job. i have two friends in my very lab who may or may not be around after june, and there are only 4 of us… another lab down the hall lost 2 of 4 last summer… the reality of soft money hitting close to home. and i am just feeling more and more comfy with the idea of being self-employed in the long term vision, and FREE to unschool and live life to the fullest. i think that one thing that has excited me most in all this, is the freedom i would have to pursue some of MY own personal “studies” goals of learning i have in mind for myself, i believe i’d still be well situated to make use of the lab facilities here in more of a voluntary and self-directed manner if i was basically funding life by other means. (for those who don’t know, i used to work on marine mammals, have been working on salmon for the last ~2 years to pay the bills, but there is a wonderful marine mammal lab here that i would love to be more involved in and have tons to offer and would love to maintain a more casual connection, continue to pursue some studies (OF MY OWN CHOOSING! imagine that!) maybe publish on a not-stressful-deadline-oriented basis… oh the possibilities of a free life!

maybe this is all a pipe dream, but it sure is fun to imagine it! i really have myself in positive-thought mode, and trying to keep that going…. 🙂 oh, and reading lots of unschooling literature at the moment (in addition to naomi aldort) so that is just filling me with ideas and dreams.

ok so i’m reading unschooling stuff. now i realize i am really extreme compared to most people but i am literally just not planning on testing quinn, doing assignments, workbooks (unless it’s something he’s interested in and wants to) and “curriculum” in general other than self-directed curriculum. oh you want to know more about garbage trucks? let’s go visit the sanitation department. ya know? the more i read other peoples’ unschooling experiences and stories, the more strongly i believe he will learn everything he “needs” to know, without ever having to be forced into an assignment.

HA. i HAVE all the tools i need already! (i think i have 3 different sizes of chisel, in fact.) and i am a pro at chainsaws now. (as of yesterday.)

i love the concept of permaculture. i am going to read that whole site.

dodge neon on craigslist, and they actually got back to me when i emailed about mileage!!!!!! it’s a 2002, with only 82000 miles, and under $3000 which is my loan amount…. i was hoping for 1998 but 2002 would be grand! going to see this car on saturday…….
quinn and i went to library story hour and meet up with renee and ellie (and it turned out elizabeth wyland and cole were there too). we were home by 8:30 and upstairs in the bed before 9.

1-22-10

the car is white. i felt like such a grown up, emailing to ask about the mileage (she had not posted that in the ad yet, went back to correct it after i asked.)

just after i woke up, and was still lying in bed this morning, quinn BURST out laughing in his sleep. it sounded like he was completely awake, giggling as if i was tickling him. i was AMAZED he was still asleep, but he was! immediately he was back to breathing regularly…. so funny! and cute!